The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, by Jessica Hopper, 426 pgs 

Much of the time, reading criticism of someone else's artistic work is pure drudgery, but this book is just the opposite. Jessica Hopper's glorious prose is witty, hyperbolic and aggressive--just like a rock critic should be. This book is essentially a collection of articles and interviews from the last twenty years of the author on a band circuit in Chicago, where she built her own career without any schooling or professional network--a monumental task for anyone in this field. She wrote her heart out for music, chronicling the rise of Chance the Rapper, lamenting the capitalist take-over of meaningful punk rock venues and applying feminist theory to outdated ideas of rock music--the lack of inclusion and tearing down the punk rock "boys" club--band by band. Particularly fascinating is her transcription of an interview with Jim Derogatis, a fellow music critic working at the Chicago Tribune, who details how his investigative work led to R. Kelly being prosecuted for sexual assault. Each essay is more or less a memoir of Hopper's fixation on music and how it helps her learn more about herself and ourselves. The great thing about reading music criticism is getting to listen to the music after you've read something--try to hear what Hopper is hearing--and in so doing, you become a more involved listener. 

Dear Ijeawele: or a feminist manifesto in fifteen suggestions

Dear Ijeawele, or a feminist manifesto in fifteen suggestions / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 69 pgs.

A friend asked for advice on raising her daughter so Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote her a letter with advice on how to be sure the new baby grows up to be a strong, confident feminist.  These fifteen suggestions seem so obvious written down but it is a great list starting with the advice that the mother be a "full person."  Motherhood is wonderful but if your daughter sees you doing nothing else, you are giving her the message that she should do nothing else.The final suggestion is to teach her that difference is ordinary and normal.  Be careful that you are not teaching her to be non-judgmental or  without opinion but know that her opinions are hers alone.  Not everyone will share them.

A lovely letter.

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields / Wendy Lower 270 pp.

I share Patrick's lukewarm assessment of this book. Lower's research expands the examination into the role of German women in the murder of Jews and others in WWII. She moves beyond the crimes of female camp guards to include those of teachers, nurses, social workers and wives. Her analysis, which breaks these women into categories of witnesses, accomplices and perpetrators, is heavily influenced by feminist theory, and was largely interesting. But the writing style is unsatisfactory; I found myself repeatedly wondering, "Where's the topic sentence?" as though I were grading a high school essay.

I was also troubled by the latter portion of the book's seeming praise of the East German justice system as compared to that in West Germany. Indeed, it seems clear that West Germany was lackluster in its pursuit of Nazi war criminals and that latent anti-Semitism and Nazism are to blame for that - nothing to celebrate. And Lower would have it that East Germany's higher rate of prosecution and conviction is a good thing. Maybe. To the extent that investigation and pursuit of these criminals involved the Stasi, it is hard to see that the results of these prosecutions, however satisfying and even necessary, can be called justice. At the very least, due diligence demands a writer point out (at length) the exceedingly different mechanisms available to the East Germans in their pursuit of war criminals.